


Carte Blanche

by paintedfences



Category: This House - Graham
Genre: M/M, They are so fucking in love, Walter's never touched a man before, help me, i love them, this house
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:27:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27702061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paintedfences/pseuds/paintedfences
Summary: Tomorrow everything changes; things will shift and Walter will never have this sparring, prickly, comrades-in-arms friendship with Jack again, born as it is out of close proximity, day-in-day-out familiarity.It makes him say, ‘I’ve a room at the Winchester, round the corner. Come back for a nightcap?’
Relationships: Walter Harrison and Jack Weatherill, Walter Harrison/Jack Weatherill
Comments: 9
Kudos: 7





	Carte Blanche

Three drinks and Jack is drunk - actually drunk. Walter can’t help but stare, his hair is falling into his face, he’s leaning his face on his hand as he talks, he looks sleepy. 

Knackered. He looks knackered. 

Well, up since five most likely, like him himself, and here they are at half-past ten. And it’s been a bad day. A fucking awful day, actually.

‘Another?’ Jack looks at him, a long finger rising off the bar, ready to signal the barman.

‘Steady on,’ he finds himself saying, so uncomfortable he is at seeing Jack anything less than alert and awake. ‘You’ve got work tomorrow.’

And there it is - that look, again, and Walter doesn’t understand it, he just doesn’t, and it prompts him to ask, dropping his voice, ‘Why’d you offer it me, Jack? I don’t understand. I know you’re an honourable bugger, but it can’t just be that.’

Jack seems about to speak, then seems to become aware of where they are, huddled at one end of the commons bar, and with an effort, smiles. ‘Another time perhaps. But you’re right, of course - I’d best be going.’

But suddenly, Walter can’t bear that. Tomorrow everything changes; things will shift and he will never have this sparring, prickly, comrades-in-arms friendship with him again, born as it is out of close proximity, day-in-day-out familiarity.

It makes him say, ‘I’ve a room at the Winchester, round the corner. Come back for a nightcap?’

***

He can’t believe Jack said yes. He can’t believe he’s standing here in Walter’s middling-to-good room with the velvet curtains and the ceiling rose and the stucco wallpaper with his hands behind his back, clearly not sure whether he’s supposed to be sitting or standing. And he can’t believe he invited him. What the bloody hell was he thinking? 

He waves to the pair of armchairs by the window, muttering, ‘Well ‘ave a seat then,’ and goes to the sideboard, gets a pair of clean glasses and the half-full bottle of Redbreast sitting there. 

He knows what he’s thinking. Deep-down, he knows. And he’s being a bloody stupid idiot, but he’s drunk enough to drown that little voice, and to carry on anyway. 

Tomorrow everything changes. 

He goes over to where Jack is sitting, holds the glass out to him, and then as he goes to take it, pulls it back out of his reach. ‘So, tell me then. Why?’

Jack looks at him, closes his eyes a second, sighs and opens them again. He leans over, takes the glass from his hand and gestures at the seat opposite, as if it’s his own room and not bloody Walter’s. Still, Walter sits.

‘I suppose it was just one of those moments,’ he says slowly. ‘Where you see it all flash before your eyes, and you don’t - well, suddenly you can’t think what it’s all _for_.’ 

‘You don’t like her,’ he says softly.

Jack stays silent a moment, and then says quietly, ‘No. I don’t think I do.’

‘Another thing we have in common,’ he says. ‘I don’t like her either.’

Jack smiles, that wonderful, self-deprecating smile. It warms Walter. ‘That shouldn’t matter.’ 

‘It does, though.’ He watches Jack, the set lines of his face. ‘But that’s not all. Come on Jack, Spit it out.’

His eyes close again, but when he opens them they’re focused on his glass. He sips his whiskey and says, ‘To tell you the truth Walter, I’m -’ he gives a little laugh ‘- I - I suppose I’m just a little done in. And when you said what you said it was like a - a shining door opened up in front of me, and I thought, _yes_. My mother’s in the Dordogne, and I could call up Eve and let me see if she’d let me take the children out of school for a week and -’ he raises a hand, lets it fall slowly. ‘A moment of madness.’

Odd to think of Jack chasing a flock of little anklebiters about. A little sad somehow, too. ‘France, eh? The Dordogne. I’ve been there, as a lad.’

‘Oh yes?’ The polite interest. The little tilt of the head.

‘Stayed in a _jeet-ay_ ,’ he says, looking for that smile, and he sees it, though Jack’s eyes turn on him, sparkling, and he says, chidingly, ‘You _know how to say it_.’

He puts his hands up. ‘You got me.’ He looks at his own glass, tips it one way and the other, watching the amber liquid spill from side to side. ‘I’m sorry to hear it though. Trouble with the missus.’

‘Yes, well.’ He coughs uncomfortably. ‘It’s not really fair on the women, is it? They have your babies and then, poor things, they want you around.’ Suddenly he goes still, seems to freeze, his hand reaching for his eyes, and somehow Jack can’t stand it, he really can’t.

He grabs the hand, squeezes it, says as heartfelt as he can make it, ‘I’m sorry, mate.’

Jack swallows, not looking at him. ‘Well. As I said, a moment of madness.’

And then he leans forward in his chair and presses his lips to Walter’s. 

The shock of it makes Walter lurch back - it’s firm but so soft, so different from kissing a woman - but then immediately he’s surging back into it, pressing into it, gasping, because fuck - fucking _Christ_ , what is he doing?

He slides out of his chair onto his knees to get closer, Jack’s mouth opens under his and it’s wet and strong and warm and he’s shaking it’s so - it’s so, _so_ -

‘It’s all right. Calm down, calm down.’ Jack’s hands cup his face, and he kisses him again, slower and deeper. It tears a groan from Walter’s throat and he pulls away, eyes shut, hissing to himself, ‘Bloody hell. Bloody, _bloody_ hellfire.’

‘I can go,’ says Jack in his ear, hands tight on his shoulders. ‘Tell me to go if you want.’

‘No. Come ‘ere.’ He stands up, tugs Jack to his feet and kisses him again, and oh, it’s queer to have to look up, to have his head tilted back when he’s being kissed, to have a big hand instead of a small, soft one touching down on his hip. 

‘What’d you _want_ , Jack?’ He jerks his head back toward the bed, and in answer, Jack kisses him again, sliding his arms around his waist, pressing their bodies together.

When it breaks, Jack’s leaning his forehead against his own; Walter can feel his breath on his face. 

‘I would like,’ he pauses, and Walter hears the catch in his voice, feels the blunt jut of his prick against his hip. ‘I would like, for once, to give you _exactly_ what you ask for.’ He leans in again, the barest brush of his lips. ‘Anything. Carte blanche.’ Then Jack pulls back to look directly into his eyes, and there is something there that is both familiar to him and not - he skates his thumb down Walter’s jaw. ‘What do you want, Walter?’

His mind is roaring static, like a stuck dial on the radio that can’t be righted. He wants to know how it is, with men, he wants to know all the things that men do, and he wants Jack to do them. 

He breathes out hard, aware he’s trembling, and puts his clumsy, square-fingered hands to Jack's hips. 

‘Everything. I - I. Everything.’

Jack looks at him a moment, then nods. ‘All right.’ 

He walks him backward toward the bed, stopping when the back of Walter’s legs hit the mattress, and then steps back, his hands going to the buttons of his neat waistcoat, and abruptly Walter has to sit down. 

He doesn’t look, _can’t_ look as Jack strips, it’s too much somehow, too intimate - he focuses on pulling off his suit jacket, his trousers - he kicks them away like they’re to blame somehow for all this - and he’s got his waistcoat off but his fingers are stumbling on the top buttons of his shirt when a hand comes around his own, and Jack says, ‘Let me.’

Jack’s in his boxers and shirt, which is hanging open, and Walter’s face is so close to his torso and by god he’s slim under that neat suit - his stomach’s nowt but a plank of muscle. He reaches out to touch, puts his palm down on Jack’s flat belly and Jack jumps, startled, against him. Then after a brief pause Jack moves into it, his hand coming down on the back of Walter’s head, and Walter’s face is pressed against the warm skin of his stomach. 

He shudders, kisses it, and then Jack releases him, continues with Walter’s buttons. He keeps his eyes closed, his face pricking warm with humiliation as Jack slides his shirt off, leaving him only in his underwear. He’s no looker, he knows that, his stomach is soft - the pints - though he supposes there’s some broadness still in his shoulders.

He feels Jack’s hands come down on his shoulders, kneading, and then the air shifts as Jack crouches down, puts a finger to his face, kisses his jaw. ‘On the bed?’

Walter rucks his drawers down, seeing his thick, hard prick spring free with a rush of something like terror, and follows Jack, who’s shucked his shirt and boxers off too, and is lying on his side watching him, one hand on himself, breathing hard. 

His eyes are all over him, hot and wanting, but somehow Walter’s unprepared for when Jack actually touches him, pushing him back onto his back, his mouth finding the juncture of neck and shoulder, biting, then sucking. He hears himself makes a sound, his prick jumps, pulsing, and Jack wraps a hand around it, squeezes, then lets go and slides his hand down Walter’s torso, over his shoulders, his chest, his stomach -

Walter knocks his hand away. ‘Less of that ey,’ he says, sharper than he intended, then feels himself redden as Jack pauses, his hand on Walter’s hip.

But then Jack leans in and lets his mouth follow the trail his hand had made, his tongue making broad swoops across Walter’s body, his chest, his ribs, his - oh _buggering fuck_ \- his stomach, low down, between his bellybutton and his cock, and Jack takes hold of him again, squeezes it, grinding himself against the bed with a little, helpless groan. 

He looks up at Walter, flushed, his hair falling in his face, and nods to the hard, straining prick in his hand. ‘May I?’

Walter nods, shaking - fucking terrified actually - but cranes his neck so he can watch every second of Jack leaning down and taking his cock in his mouth. He closes his eyes, breathes out, and lets Jack suck him. 

He doesn’t realise he’s holding himself so tense until Jack’s fingers find his own and twine with them, squeeze once - he can almost hear him say it, one word - _relax_.

Then Jack takes his hand and places it on the back of his head, guiding Walter’s hand into his hair, and then braces himself on the mattress to suck hard, then gentle, then hard again, then does something with his tongue that pulls a raw sound from Walter’s throat.

Given leave to, Walter slips his fingers through Jack’s hair, soft, just slightly too long, and sinks into the feel of Jack’s mouth, gives himself over to it. It’s warm and wet and spiking an aching, fiery heat deep inside him, behind his balls, under his belly.

He closes his eyes. For some reason, tears prickle them, and then Jack sucks at him and it wrenches something in his chest and he bites his lip around a ‘ _Jack_ ,’ that’s almost a sob, and thinks, wildly, out of nowhere, _god I’ll fucking miss you_.

***

Jack looks down at him, his hair falling in his face, open and unguarded and for a second looking nowt more than a lad of twenty. ‘All right?’ His hard prick is pressing up against where Walter’s been slicked and opened and made ready. 

Inside, Walter’s twinging, that spot inside him he hadn’t even known was there is aching for more pressure, for thick, unyielding fullness against it, and he lets his legs open even wider. Christ, who is he?

‘Do it,’ he says, and Jack slides home, inch by burning inch, until he’s fully seated in him, leaning down over him. Jack pants, racked with shudders, his cheek pressed against Walter’s.

Stretched and full, his arse burning, his cock hard and pulsing in tandem with the clutching, greedy ache of that place inside him, Walter moves his head to take Jack’s mouth, deep and wet and hard. He’s his, he’s his, he’s _fucking his_ and that’s the fucking end of it.

Then Jack starts to move, and all thought is gone.

***

Jack’s fitted the long length of himself up against Walter’s side. He’s pulled up the sheet over them, is stroking down Walter’s arm, worrying his face into his neck. His cock is softening, pressing into Walter’s thigh, trailing a sticky, warm trail against his skin.

‘You have a lovely body, you know. I thought you would, under that dire suit.’

He laughs, can’t help it, as much at the thought that Jack had ever thought that about him, as at the ridiculous bloody statement itself. ‘D’you tell all the lads that?’

Jack’s fingers still on his skin. ‘No,’ he says. ‘Actually, I don’t do this… at all.’

‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Neither me.’

He feels Jack smile against the skin of his neck as if to say, _well yes, that was obvious_ , and he feels his face prickle with heat.

But Jack’s voice isn’t mocking when he strokes down Walter’s ribs, his hip, his thick middle, recently swabbed clean of his own spattered come, and asks, ‘Was that what you wanted, Walter?’

‘Aye,’ Walter says, and closing his eyes, puts his lips in Jack’s hair. ‘Aye chuck. That were grand.’

***

Jack offers to let him fuck him, so politely that it makes Walter laugh and Jack flush, and then only make Walter laugh more at his irritated, ‘Well _I’m sorry_. I thought we were in bed together.’

But Christ, much as he wants to, Jack looks knackered, and he’s knackered himself, so he leans up on an elbow and kisses Jack’s cheek, just under his ear. ‘Not tonight love. I’m fading fast.’

Jack yawns and nods, his eyes heavy. ‘And me. I should go.’ His fingers trail down Walter’s thigh.

‘Want to kip here?’ He’d like that. He knows it’s a stupid thing to say, a stupid suggestion. But he can’t help offering, if only to put it out there between them, so Jack knows it’s something he’d have happen, if he could.

‘I don’t think that would be a very good idea,’ Jack says quietly. 

‘Imagine the headlines.’

‘I’d rather not.’ Jack leans over, brushes his lips over his cheek. ‘Don’t get up. I’ll let myself out. Goodnight.’

***

Walter gets up for a piss during the night, wincing at the burn in his muscles, the ache in his arse. 

He finds himself looking at himself in the bathroom mirror, wondering - well. What now? What the bloody hell now?


End file.
